Re: gdb performance is impossible!!

[Gabe Foster <gabe@sgrail.com>]

Jake Colman wrote:
> 
> We just switched our large application from the SunPro compiler to GCC
> 2.95.1.  This required us to switch from dbx to gdb 4.18.  We have found that
> gdb's performance is incredibly slow - so much so as to make it pretty much
> unusable.  I've got to beleive that this is something unique to us since I
> know that gdb is considered an excellent debugger.
> 
> So, what should we be looking at as a potential problem?  The application is
> rather large is linked with about 10 of our own shared libraries - in
> addition to whatever system libraries might be shared as well.  It uses g++
> and is compiler with what think are the appropriate gcc flags for shared
> libraries and debugging.
> 

I've noticed a similar problem with g++ & gdb on SGI's IRIX.  My quick
and dirty analysis was that g++ creates symbol tables that are 2 to 3
times the size of the ones created by the SGI C++ compiler.  As a
result, the symbol tables could not fit into RAM when loaded by gdb and
the whole thing started swapping.  I was not able to find a way to fix
this problem and gave up.  I'm sorry I'm not more help, but I have not
found many people share this problem.  There do not seem to be a lot of
large C++ based projects out there in freeware land.  Since those
projects drive the development of the GCC/GDB suite (as should be
expected), not alot of mindshare is available to solve this problem.

Good luck, and if you find a solution please let me know....

>...

--> Gabe

-- 
 * J. Gabriel Foster  "We have advanced to new and surprising
 * Silicon Grail       levels of bafflement" - Lois McMaster Bujold
 * gabe@sgrail.com